First off, we took the equipment and materials needed for our experiment. By trial and error (well, error didn't really happened), we were able to figure out how to use them.
I. Boyle's Law
While the temperature kept constant, a syringe was used to change the volume of the air, which in turn, also changes the pressure. The change in pressure is read using Gas Pressure Sensor. The syringe was pushed down by 1 milliliter and the pressure was observed to be increasing.
II. Charles' Law
For this part of the experiment, pressure is kept constant because the gas was allowed to change in volume with the change in temperature. A hotplate was used to raise the temperature of the water close to its boiling point. A digital thermometer was used to determine the change in temperature, whereas a "heat engine" (which has calibrations on it) was used to measure the change in volume. In this case, the gas inside the metal chamber in water bath was cooled by adding small chunks of ice to the water. We observed the moving of the piston of the heat engine upon adding ice.
After the two experiments, we recorded the measurements we had.
III. Personal View
It was really fun doing the experiments when you have fun people to work with and those same people have also the patience to try again when a trial fails.
We did the whole experiment twice due to many errors: (1) the pressure reading is not consistent when the syringe is pulled and then pushed, (2) the volume of the gas inside the heat engine wouldn't change after collecting only five data points, and (3) the water was not heated close to 100 degrees Celsius.
However, my groupmates were patient enough to do them all over again, and we still have a long time left to work. We were then able to get the correct values and we got the correct trend.
And yes, the air followed the Gas Laws with small deviations, because obviously, it is not an ideal gas.
